More than 590 million barrels of oil could be recovered from an oil field west of Shetland, an exploration firm has reported.

Hurricane Energy (www.hurricaneenergy.com) has tripled its estimate of how many barrels it will recover from the Greater Lancaster Area field — from 200 million in a 2013 assessment to 593 million.

Production is expected to start in the first half of 2019 and to reach a daily rate of 17,000 barrels soon after.

CEO Robert Trice said: “We believe that the GLA is a single hydrocarbon accumulation, making it the largest undeveloped discovery on the UK Continental Shelf.”

Hurricane Energy claims to have found more oil in UK waters than any other exploration company over the past 10 years.